Clayton Kershaw cried. Kiké Hernández swaggered. Dave Roberts smoked a cigar.

And Los Angeles rejoiced.

Their beloved Dodgers are the 2024 World Series champions. And a city so accustomed to championship parades finally got the one they had spent 36 years dreaming of.

Two days after the Dodgers clinched their first full-season championship since 1988, around 225,000 supporters, according to the Los Angeles Police Department, descended on downtown Los Angeles to celebrate with the ball club they love. Another 42,458 filled Dodger Stadium.

But the official numbers only confirmed the obvious: The area surrounding the parade route, from City Hall to Fifth and Flower streets, was flooded by a sea of blue-clad fans paying tribute to their beloved team at last.

But the parade and subsequent celebration at Dodger Stadium, which also featured an encore presentation by Compton’s own Ice Cube, on Friday was much more than a triumphant denouement to a title-winning season.

For Walker Buehler, it represented redemption. For Shohei Ohtani, his freedom from futility. For Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and the entire Dodgers organization, a salve to too many past postseason failures. For Kershaw, the franchise icon, it was a dream fulfilled.

And for the thousands of fans who lined the parade route and filled Dodger Stadium for the encore celebration, it was about years of heartbreak, despair, longing and frustration being washed away at last.

“We waited four years for this,” Freddy Chulo of San Clemente said at Dodger Stadium. “I think that it brought all of Los Angeles together as a whole. The diversity of everybody being here was really great.”

The Dodgers are one of the most tightly woven strands in the fabric of Los Angeles.

The fans showed that on Friday.

Chants of “Freddie! Freddie!” rang out from the parade route to Dodger Stadium as confetti shot from contraptions every 10 or so feet. Kershaw, long the tortured face of the franchise, received an ovation at Chavez Ravine that brought him to tears. Multiple fans who flocked to the celebration spoke about what the Dodgers and this World Series win means to their families.

“We’re here because we’re huge fans,” said Jahnett Lopez, who drove in from the Coachella Valley for the parade and was draped in Dodgers gear.

Her father was a Dodgers fan. She’s a Dodgers fan. And now, Lopez said, her son is a fan.

“It’s gonna continue (for) generations and generations through the family,” Lopez said. “It’s really part of our lives.”

The Dodgers reciprocated the love.

Stan Kasten, president and CEO of the Dodgers, said the franchise owes its success to the fans. Multiple players declared their love for Los Angeles and their appreciation for their fans.

“This is such a special moment for me,” Ohtani, who signed with the Dodgers this offseason after six years with the Angels, told the crowd at Chavez Ravine. “I’m so honored to be here and be part of this team. Thank you, Los Angeles, and thank you, fans.”

A long time coming

The parade had been 36 years in the making. That alone would be enough to make it worthwhile.

But for longtime fans and the Dodgers organization, Friday’s celebration was about more than that: It was about the history of the franchise, the team’s connection to the city — the way the Dodgers were connected to Brooklyn, New York, before they relocated here in 1958 — and it was about hope renewed after repeatedly being ripped away.

Hope that this is just the beginning. Hope that these new boys of summer have turned into the titans of autumn. That L.A.’s beloved Dodgers, finally free from the mockery they endured over their 2020 COVID-19-tinged title and the burden they shouldered over too frequently falling short of expectations, will begin a run even more dominant than the last dozen years.

And hope that parades in Los Angeles will become as synonymous with autumn as Halloween, Dia de los Muertos and the Santa Ana winds.

“Let’s get ready to run it back,” Roberts, now a two-time championship manager, told the crowd and his team at Dodger Stadium.

Kershaw also said more championships were coming. And Betts, the team’s All-Star right fielder, said he wanted five or six more.

“I don’t want to say this is once a lifetime,” said Jesus Anaya of Laverne, who came to the parade with his 18-year-old son Lorenzo, “because they’re going to do it again.

“But it’s a memory, right? It’s all about these special moments,” Anaya said.

The Dodgers are good at producing special moments. But moments like Friday’s have been all too rare.

Sure, the Dodgers, for much of their history the scrappy underdogs — “dem bums,” as Brooklynites called them — are now the behemoths of Major League Baseball.

They’ve won the National League West 11 out of the last 12 years. They regularly win 100-plus games a season. The 2024 World Series marked their fourth appearance in the Fall Classic in eight years. They sell out every game, have a mega television deal and are widely considered to be the best-run organization in baseball.

And they have stars aplenty: Betts and Freeman, Kershaw and Buehler. During previous seasons, they also had Corey Seager, who has two World Series MVPs to his name, one with the Dodgers, and Dodgers legend Justin Turner.

But they also have had plenty of failures.

In 2017, they lost the World Series to the Houston Astros in a thrilling seven games. It later turned out the Astros had cheated.

And so, the devastating images of Kershaw after being rocked in Game 5 in Houston went from another tragic sorrow to one of Dodgers martyrdom, since the Astros hitters knew what pitches he would throw.

The title had been stolen from the Dodgers and their fans. Their ace had been denied the chance to cement his legacy.

The next year, the Dodgers lost in the World Series again, this time to a superior Boston Red Sox team that still had Betts. Hope for a title turned to despair once more.

Then came 2020. The season was only 60 games, but the Dodgers were still dominant. That strange, COVID-19-tinged season, played largely without fans until deep into the playoffs, ended with a championship.

The Dodgers beat the Tampa Bay Rays in six games, but they did so in a neutral site in Texas.

And there was no tribute through the streets of Los Angeles.

The subsequent years were even harsher: They lost in the National League Championship Series in 2021, and then in the National League Division Series in 2022 and ’23, despite having added Freeman to the team. Those last two failures stung even more because they came against divisional foes.

Before the Dodgers signed Ohtani and then ace pitchers Yoshinobu Yamamoto and hometown kid Tyler Glasnow, among others, this past offseason had felt bleak to many. Kershaw, their aging, weary ace, needed shoulder surgery. Buehler, a previous postseason beast, was recovering from his second Tommy John surgery. Betts and Freeman hadn’t performed in the last two postseasons.

And even this season, at times, seemed ill-fated, despite Ohtani, Betts and Freeman leading the way.

setbacks this season

Ohtani had the first 50 home run, 50 stolen base season in history, but also couldn’t pitch because of his offseason shoulder surgery. The Dodgers’ lineup was inevitable, but so, it seemed, was the team losing more than a rotation’s worth of starting pitchers to injuries.

Betts and Freeman were their usual superstar selves. But Betts missed two months because he fractured a bone in his left hand. Freeman missed some time as well, because life got in the way when his son Max was hospitalized and subsequently diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, which attacks the nerves.

When his son began recovering and Freeman returned to the lineup, the Dodgers fans gave him an ovation that moved him to tears.

“You showed up for me and my family,” Freeman said Friday. “It was one of the greatest moments I’ve had on a baseball field.”

Still, the rival San Diego Padres looked like the better team toward the end of the season and when Freeman severely sprained his ankle just before the postseason, the Dodgers’ postseason prospects did not look good.

But the team found something they didn’t have in recent years: Grit. Fight. Perseverance. And an underdog mentality that may not have been warranted given their payroll.

Freeman fought through the pain to get on the field, and the Dodgers took down the Padres in five games in the NLDS. In the NLCS, they beat the New York Mets in six games.

And that set a date with the New York Yankees, just like in 1955 and in Valenzuela’s rookie year.

In Game 1 of the World Series, Freeman did his best impression of Kirk Gibson’s iconic walk-off home run in the first game of the 1988 World Series.

Like Gibson, Freeman was ailing. Like the ’88 team, the ’24 team was losing by a run and were down to their last out.

But Gibson hit a two-run home run on a full-count backdoor slider.

Freeman swung at the first pitch, and hit the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history.

And Freeman didn’t stop there. He had four home runs and a record-tying 12 runs batted in. And he was named the World Series MVP.

“I did everything I could to get on the field for you guys,” Freeman said on Friday, “and I’m glad I did because we won a championship.”

But they may not have if it weren’t for the heroics of Buehler. The Dodgers erased a five-run deficit in Game 5 on Wednesday and had the lead going into the final frame. But the bullpen, which had done a Herculean job all postseason, was taxed. In came Buehler, whoses lone win and 5.38 ERA during the 2024 season represented the worst of his career.

Postseason Buehler, though, has always been different. He sat the Yankees down in order.

And a season that seemed destined to end in failure became a triumph.

On Friday, an ecstatic Buehler wore a Dodgers jersey, but not his own. Instead, he donned the No. 55 of Orel Hershiser, who performed his own heroics in 1988, including the last out of the World Series. On Wednesday, Hershisher, in the Spectrum SportsNet studios, wore Buehler’s No. 21.

And on the Dodger Stadium field on Friday, Buehler spotted another legendary ace. He ran to him, jumped and landed in the legend’s arms. That legend was Kershaw.

Friday’s celebration was a reminder of a singular truth: Los Angeles loves the Dodgers.

But that wasn’t always the case.

The Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1958. Things started well for the Los Angeles Dodgers. They won the World Series in 1959, 1963 and 1965, behind the golden arms of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. But the team wasn’t yet part of the city’s fabric like they had been in Brooklyn.

At least part of that was because of resentment in L.A.’s prodigious Mexican-American community over the city’s use of eminent domain in the Hispanic-heavy area of Chavez Ravine, the eventual home of the Dodgers.

That all changed in 1981.

The year of Fernandomania.

Valenzuela, a pudgy-but-prolific pitcher from a small town in Mexico, burst onto the scene on opening day, recording a shutout — the first in a string of eight starts that have since become legend.

Mexican Americans flocked to Dodger Stadium to see their new, unlikely hero who looked like them. He looked to the sky with every pitch. He threw a devastating screwball. He helped L.A. win the World Series that year, and took home both the Rookie of the Year and Cy Young awards for his effort.

Valenzuela pitched 11 seasons for the Dodgers, starting in 1980, and ranks ninth on the franchise’s all-time win list. His rookie season in 1981 sparked the Fernandomania phenomenon as he went 8-0 with five shutouts to start the season.

The Dodgers fan base was changed forever. And the franchise has been woven into the city’s fabric ever since.

Valenzuela died on Oct. 22. Friday, the day of the parade, would have been his 64th birthday.

Reminders of Valenzuela’s legacy were myriad on Friday: Fans donned jerseys. Announcer Joe Davis wished him a happy birthday. And Roberts said what many Dodgers fans undoubtedly felt: “This one’s for you,” he said about Valenzuela.

Johnny Leon, 22, of Pomona was among those who wore Valenzuela’s No. 34 jersey on Friday.

“So many family members love him and I’ve seen his highlights,” Leon said. “I wish he could be here to see this.”

Miguel Ramirez, 49, of Norwalk highlighted the connection the icon helped foster between the city and the Dodgers.

“Fernando brought so many Hispanics to the game,” Ramirez said. “To be here today on his birthday is special. (The) Dodgers (are) family.”

one big Family

That could sum up the entire day.

Los Angeles and the Dodgers came together as a family.

They celebrated together at last.

Los Angeles and the Dodgers survived multiple heartbreaks together, so they could revel together on Friday.

For Buehler, it was redemption after an awful season. For Freeman and Betts, it was catharsis after past postseason letdowns. Up and down the roster, and even among the coaching and front office staff, there was vindication.

For Kershaw, who didn’t play in the postseason, it was a dream fulfilled. At last.

“I’ve waited for this day for a long time,” he said. “I didn’t have anything to do this with this championship. But this is the best feeling in the world.”

He then raised the trophy into the air. As the crowd roared, he shouted, “Dodger for life!”

The fans at Dodger Stadium, along the parade route and watching at home felt the same: Dodgers for life.

Staff writer Bill Plunkett contributed to this report.